


hold onto whatever keeps you warm

by taizi



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Sick Fic, soft soft boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-27 20:06:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12088419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: Kaname blinks once, twice, three times. He hears himself say, “Shibata? Why are you calling me at two o’clock in the morning?”“Because Natsume has the ghost flu and he’s being difficult.”





	hold onto whatever keeps you warm

Kaname wakes up to the sound of his cellphone, the tinny, cheerful ringtone drawing him up out of bed. The room is thrown into harsh contrast by the shine of the phone screen against the black pitch of night, and the call cuts off almost as soon as Kaname reaches for the phone. **  
**

He picks it up anyway instead of going right back to bed, morbid curiosity getting the best of him. He can’t think of anyone who would call this late at night. Certainly not his father, asleep down the hall.

A quick look at the missed call log shows Kaname a number he doesn’t recognize. And it called twice, within a handful of minutes.

Maybe he should just forget about it, turn the ringer down and go back to bed, but for reasons he can’t fully understand, half-awake as he is, he doesn’t.

He stands in the dark of his room and stares at the unfamiliar number in his phone, worry crawling to the front of his mind from the quiet corners, as he debates calling the number back.

Somewhere else in the large house, muffled through the walls, the landline starts to ring.

Kaname all but runs down the hall, sliding into the kitchen and picking up the receiver, sparing a second to hope it didn’t wake up his father as he answers, “Hello?”

 _“Tanuma thank god,”_  an unexpected voice says from the other end of the line, sounding harried.  _“You were sleeping weren’t you? I told him you would be. Any normal person would be.”_  A little removed, as though he took the phone from his ear to address someone else, he adds,  _“Hear that? We woke him up. Are you happy?”_

Kaname blinks once, twice, three times. He hears himself say, “Shibata? Why are you calling me at two o’clock in the morning?”

_“Because Natsume has the ghost flu and he’s being difficult.”_

“Ghost…flu?”

_“Look, I don’t know. I guess yokai can hurt him in a way we can’t really see. Nyanko here says he’s had bruises and curse-marks before that are invisible to anyone without the sight. That’s reassuring.”_

At a complete loss, and with an anxious pit in his stomach roughly the size of a grapefruit, Kaname asks, “Shibata, I don’t understand. Takashi is – sick? Is he okay? Should I – “

_“Don’t offer to come out here this late at night, what’s wrong with you? He’s sick but he took some weird spirit realm medicine and the cat says he’ll be fine. But he’s feverish and loopy and he won’t – dammit, Natsume, let me talk – he won’t lay down. It’s like dealing with an ornery twelve year old. Or Nishimura.”_

Kaname leans back against the counter and rubs his eyes. Shibata sounds sleepless and short-tempered, obviously having dealt with spirit shenanigans during the length of the short holiday Natsume spent at his house, but it’s not a far cry from his usually prickly attitude, so Kaname is having a hard time parsing how serious the situation over there really is.

Deeply regretting going with his father to visit relatives instead of with his boyfriend to visit their friend, Kaname says, “I want to talk to him, but I’d rather talk on my cellphone. Would you mind calling it again instead?”

_“Yeah, I can – would you be patient!”_

A dial tone cuts the sound off, and Kaname shakes his head as he hangs the landline up again. Hurrying back to his room and sliding the door closed behind him, Kaname makes it to his bed before his cellphone lights up.

He answers on the first ring. “Shibata?”

 _“Kaname?”_ a different, dearer voice replies. 

Relief floods through him in a rush, and Kaname says, “It’s me. How are you feeling?”

 _“I’m fine,”_  Takashi tells him, because he’s Takashi, and that’s the only answer to that question that he knows. He definitely sounds heavily medicated, his words slurring and disjointed, and Kaname wishes he was with him.  _“Sorry it’s so late.”_

“Hey, don’t worry about it. Shibata says you had a lot going on over there.”

_“Mm. Normal stuff.”_

There’s a rustling sound, and Shibata’s irritated voice in the background, and Kaname says, “Try not to move around so much, okay? You need to rest.”

 _“Okay,”_ Takashi says easily enough, soft and sleepy in Tanuma’s ear. In the dark of his room, with Takashi so unguarded as he speaks, the moment feels intimate the way phone calls hardly ever do.  _“I just needed to talk to you.”_

“About what?” Kaname asks gently. Takashi makes a quiet noise, a verbal shrug, and Kaname can picture it so clearly he’s practically seeing it in real time.

_“The yokai gave me nightmares. I’ll be better in the morning, but – I needed to talk to you.”_

And Kaname understands that. He understands that perfectly well. Heart full, he says, “I’m sorry I didn’t go with you. Next time I’ll be there, I promise.”

 _“You don’t have to be here,”_ Takashi tells him, firm, for all that his voice rocks together and apart like a loose wave,  _“you just have to be okay. I know I don’t say it very much, but you’re so important. I love you so much. If you weren’t okay, I wouldn’t be okay either, but as long as you are.… “_

“Takashi?”

 _“He finally fell asleep,”_  Shibata grumbles, obviously having taken back the phone.  _“I can’t believe a phone call to you was all it took in the end. That’s kind of annoying. You two are so lovey-dovey it makes me sick.”_

“He’s really okay?” Kaname stresses, because he can’t help it, because hearing him talk like that did something painful to the soft, inner workings of his chest. “He sounds – “

 _“I know how he sounds,”_  his friend says over him, not unkindly.  _“But he’s really fine. I took his temperature earlier and according to our plebeian human devices, he’s not even running a fever. The cat says this isn’t something doctors can help with, which is why he went to all the trouble to get ‘proper’ medicine. He’s got this whole disgruntled mother hen thing going on right now, actually, it’s interesting to watch. Natsume is well taken care of, I promise.”_

And Kaname trusts him. Shibata is one of a handful of people that know Takashi’s most heavily-guarded secret, and Shibata is as close to Takashi as Shibata allows himself to get to people anymore, and with Nyanko-sensei there as well, Takashi is in good hands. 

And yet… 

Kaname is wide-awake. He glances at the clock on his nightstand, and then at the dark of early morning outside his window. Tapping his fingers against his knee, before he has a chance to second-guess himself, he says, “Will you still be awake in about two hours?”

 _“Unfortunately,”_  Shibata says, followed quickly by, _“wait, why?”_

Kaname is up already and moving with purpose, phone tucked under his ear as he pulls clean clothes out of his unpacked travel bag. “No reason. See you soon.”

_“Tanuma, I told you, you don’t have to – you’re not listening anymore. I can’t stand you.”_

It’s another long trip right after the one he just got home from, and if his father wakes up and finds him gone in the middle of the night he’ll be in a world of trouble, and if Kaname was willing to be honest with himself he’d admit going back to bed would be  _wonderful._

But there are two days of school break left, and his boyfriend is a city away, sick and missing him, and Kaname is out the door ten minutes after he made the decision to leave. 

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this for a tanunatsu prompt on tumblr awhile back. tbh im here solely for gratuitous fluff
> 
> (btw i can and will find a way to write shibata into everything i love that awful boy)


End file.
